Phonetics of English: The speech organs and their role in the articulation of English sounds. Classification of sounds on an articulatory basis.
Phonological classification of sounds: Natural classes, opposition, features, neutralization, alternation.
Accents of English: A comparison of two phonological phenomena in two or more accents of English.
Structuralist phonology: The taxonomic model and its shortcomings. Problems with the phonemehood of the velar nasal.
Classical generative phonology: The SPE model. Underlying vs. surface forms. Rule formalism. Treatment of vowel shift and velar softening in this framework. The “powerfulness” vs. “naturalness” controversy.
Current phonological theory: Post-SPE models: lexical, autosegmental, government phonology, optimality theory. Treatment of an English phenomenon in one of these frameworks (chosen by the candidate).
The English vowel system: Underlying elements (“phonemes”). Vocalic contrasts. The problem of “vowel shift”. Quantity or quality (tenseness or length)?
The English syllable: Its status in phonology. Its buildup. Syllabification, ambisyllabicity. Sonority. Phonotactics: restrictions on onsets and codas, peaks and rhymes.
English word stress: Stress assignment rules, their relation to morphology and syntactic function (word class). Degrees of stress within the word. Vowel reduction.
English compound stress and phrasal stress: Distinction of compound and phrase. Prosodic hierarchy. The treatment of stress in linear (SPE) and metrical phonology.
English intonation: Tonality, tonicity, tone. Pitch contours. Neutral vs. nonneutral, focusing, emphasis, contrast. Relationship with syntax.
The relationship of morphology and phonology: The “common underlier” problem. Irregularity and suppletivism. Free and bound. Lexical storage vs. productive formation, the phonological visibility of morphological domains.